Talkin’ the Talk with Photoshop CS3 – Photomerge

We hope you dug the review the other day on Photoshop CS3. Yesterday when we made a trip to the Getty Museum for the Edward Weston show, the architecture of the museum is a perfect setting for a panoramic. And when we say panoramic, we mean Photomerge.[photopress:photomergex.jpg,full,alignright]

How good is the new version? Really ?.

We’re going to show you what we shot and what we ended up with.

( image to the right is detail of the Photomerge window with stitching options )

The sprawling grounds of the Getty allow you to turn your camera quite a few directions and compose a fairly graphic pana. You can go horizontal or vertical with some amazing results.

Now this one was done without a tripod, just tried to make sure the shots would have an overlap for the merge.
Not only is the merge virtually invisible, but you do have a choice of how you want to end up.

You can see in this first one, vertical was the way to go with the sculpture suspended for the ceiling.

In this next one, check out how the people sitting on one end of the shot are slightly curved to accommodate the natural curve of the shot.

And all I had was the 18-200 Nikon lens. Wide for sure ,but never wide enough.

The Perspective circle was ticked for this one. (see detail of program window to the right.)Can you see the merge? (samples on next page)Neither could I at first. In the first sample there is a “tell”, but one which you could easily maneuver.

I know the size here doesn’t really do it justice. But did want to show you the original images and as best as could fit, the final image.

Whatever the new algorithm, or formula, in the new version of CS3, you can fit the program to your needs and feel safe in knowing that you will not be spending all of your waking hours fixing/blending/apologizing for what could’ve been there.